By 1922, she had done both. Her one published story, The Parrot Who Knew Too Much , sold barely 300 copies but became a cult oddity for its unsettling blend of dark comedy and locked-room mystery. She was photographed at the Algonquin Round Table — not as a member, but as a “wild card guest who made Dorothy Parker laugh once and never returned.”
To this day, the journal sits in a climate-controlled box. Catalog number: MS.VW.1928.0001. Status: cubbi thompson van wylde
She charmed jazz-age New York, vanished in the Mojave, and left behind a locked journal no one could open. If you’ve ever thumbed through a yellowed 1923 society page or squinted at a faded passenger manifest from the SS Majestic , you might have stumbled across a name that feels almost too peculiar to be real: Cubbi Thompson Van Wylde . By 1922, she had done both
She never checked into the hotel she’d reserved in Barstow. Catalog number: MS
The lock on the journal was never picked. A 1932 attempt by a San Francisco locksmith failed; he reported “a mechanism unlike any I’ve seen, possibly European or custom-made.” In 1951, the journal was donated to the Huntington Library with a condition: it could not be opened without permission of the “Van Wylde literary estate” — which no one has successfully claimed since Julian died childless in 1944.
Then came the Van Wylde part.
In April 1928, Cubbi Thompson Van Wylde drove a rented Pierce-Arrow from Los Angeles to the Mojave, telling her housekeeper she was “going to see what Julian was so scared of.” She brought a .22 caliber revolver, three changes of clothes, and a leather-bound journal with a brass lock.